Panamint

The Panamint language traditionally had three main varieties: the western variety (also called Coso) spoken around Owens Lake, in the Coso mountains, and in Panamint Valley; the central variety (also called Timbisha or Tümpisa Shoshone) spoken in Death Valley; and the eastern variety spoken in Grapevine Canyon, the Funeral Range, and near Beatty. In pre-contact times, there were probably no more than 500 speakers of Panamint (Kroeber 1925). Today, there are no more than two dozen first-language speakers, most of the Timbisha variety (Golla 2011).